Searching For Film Nour Tunes

[passer-by]

Besides, do you think that the public would tolerate a black criminal making more money than them?

Not in the 40s or 50s. But again this reminds me of Agatha Christie's novels. No rich, educated, middle/upper class murderess would use anything but elegant methods with the less bloodshed possible, like poison, tiny knives or small firearms, only the servants cut throats etc.

Again, in film noir, I think only the secondary characters belong to minorities. The main villains don't. Or I haven't seen any. How can I think of oppression of the minorities when I watch the typical American man/woman being the main criminal character and all those typical american men/women hiding dark secrets and helping them to prevent things like a social scandal? Is Gutman black? Is Bridgid mexican? Is Carmen Sternwood homo? Is Eddie Mars german?

EDIT

To throw the audience off. To keep the audience guessing and awake.

I laughed when someone in here called you "mulder" , but on second thoughts...   

[ildu]

Everything in film noir that isn't white, middle class, hetrosexual, male is bad.

But not everything that is one or all of them, is good. The villains are white, heterosexual, middle or upper class and usually male. So how this distinction shows a discrimination?

To throw the audience off. To keep the audience guessing and awake.
Besides, do you think that the public would tolerate a black criminal making more money than them?

Oh, come on. You can't really believe that. First you give this ridiculous statement about how all that isn't white is portrayed as evil and then you offer this inane downright stupid conspiracy theory that really doesn't make any sense. You can't really think this genre is that deep of a insidious conspiracy.

In Cry of the City, the main character and most of the supporting characters are minorities fighting against the white establishment. In Touch of Evil, the main character was Mexican and the baddies were white. In Journey to Fear the supporting character, the force of good authority is a Turkish policeman and the bad guy is white. Are these all as such to throw people off. Where is this secret commission of film noir bigotry located? You make it sound like this big scheme.

And you still haven't offered any solid points. None of this X-Files alien bullshit is solid. If you can come up with a decent argument on this matter, I promise I'll vote you for best debater in next years FOREGO's. Seriously, it really sounds like you're substituting your teachers opinions as your own.

[Helm]

Jet, I don't know how much you value my opinion, but we've met on occasions, you know I'm not in the habit of jumping on internet bandwagons or anything. I read this whole thread. You have no concrete argument. If there's any racist undercurrent in the noir genre, it's exactly that, a subconscious undercurrent that is present on most creative work. There may be exceptions, I'm not ruling out one director making a noir movie with specific ethnic bias in mind, but I wouldn't say the whole of the genre is to be condemned on grounds of... racism, of all things. Just sounds like a lot of politically correct bullshit to me. I do not believe your position (that noir, on the whole, is consciously racist) can be held up truth through evidence. You have provided no evidence, you have provided theory from a specific level of description, and it's easy to approach anything from any level of description that suits one. I can argue against, or for, homosexuality from passages of the bible. I can argue for or against ethnic clensing by citing select passages of "Mein Kampf". There's no 'truth' there. There's just post-modern literary critique which is absurdly useful in deconstructing intention and meaning, just from discussing the form.

Furthermore, you seem to be avoiding all the pertinent arguments made against your case by snarky, pete or eric or whomever. Do you read what people tell you, try to make sense of them and approach the probability of them being more grounded than yours, or do you just read them and react to them, trying in any way to prove your're 'right'? Nobody's 'right' when they critique art, but some positions can be accepted more easily than others. I for one, having watched a lot of film noir but having no bias either for or against it, cannot say honestly that there's anything to accept in your position as you've presented it so far.

Furthermore you are rudely disservicing the people you're discussing with, by quoting sometimes very thorough positions, with a lot of thought put behind them, and then replying by an unrelated one-liner or another. You're being reactionary. If in the bottom line, you're not prepared to accept that there's a chance of you being wrong about this, then you should not be discussing it.

[passer-by]

There's just post-modern literary critique which is absurdly useful in deconstructing intention and meaning, just from discussing the form.

That attidute ruined my fun of watching what I thought was cheap, non artistic, equal to pocket editions beach reading entertainment.
Did you know that Leone's spaggheti films are influenced by Goya and that his heroes are not of the serious, silent type that likes action to empty words, but a mere necessity of the fewest scenario lines possible because  of the language barrier?
That analysis has killed me...

[Vel]

"The third man" did something unconventional - the whole soundtrack was played on a single zither, by Anton Karas; it matches the atmosphere perfectly... You could do something like that.

[ildu]

Oh I loved the music in the Third Man. It's my all-time favorite movie as well .

[jetxl]

And you still haven't offered any solid points. None of this X-Files alien bullshit is solid. If you can come up with a decent argument on this matter, I promise I'll vote you for best debater in next years FOREGO's. Seriously, it really sounds like you're substituting your teachers opinions as your own.

Threatening is the only persuasive argument.
I'm not very intimidating, so you don't have to worry.

The proof:
I googled "Film Noir" and it came up with this http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
[Classic film noir developed during and after World War II, taking advantage of the post-war ambience of anxiety, pessimism, and suspicion.]
The argument:
So the audiance was afraid, depressed and lacked trust. The film makers don't use a suburbian family to describe that feeling, but use a dark city instead. The (anti)hero is a depressed, lower class, white male. He can't trust anybody, he has a low set of morals and is a criminal or has connections in the underworld. Not a family guy, in fact the family is not present in the noir movies. The world without family values.


HELM: Let make it very clear that I do NOT see film noir as message to spread racism. This must be the bandwagon propaganda. Racism would be if the hero shows he is superior towards the ethnic minorities. However, the hero, although white male, is fully intergrated in the dark world. And he is not happy with that.
The noir film shows minorities as weird and as people with lower morals.
Subconscious or not is irrelevant, the message stayed the same.

Furthermore, you seem to be avoiding all the pertinent arguments made against your case by snarky, pete or eric or whomever. Do you read what people tell you, try to make sense of them and approach the probability of them being more grounded than yours, or do you just read them and react to them, trying in any way to prove your're 'right'? Nobody's 'right' when they critique art, but some positions can be accepted more easily than others. I for one, having watched a lot of film noir but having no bias either for or against it, cannot say honestly that there's anything to accept in your position as you've presented it so far.
Furthermore you are rudely disservicing the people you're discussing with, by quoting sometimes very thorough positions, with a lot of thought put behind them, and then replying by an unrelated one-liner or another. You're being reactionary. If in the bottom line, you're not prepared to accept that there's a chance of you being wrong about this, then you should not be discussing it.

That is untrue. I think I have written the most in this debate. Besides, I prefer short text, and put just as much effort in them as long text. And as if an argument is not vallid if it's under 200 words.
As for the "arguments" given. I have given agruments as well Ã, examples. Most only tried to find a loophole in my arguments, or ask a question that I already explaned. So I find it quite odd that you point this out towards me.
And what can I say about those one hit wonders like

There is no argument here, you're talking out of your anus. It requires no more effort than that.

Congratulations! I can't find a counter argument for this, except something that starts with "your mother..."
Yup.

What this discussion lacks is people who write down their opinion. Like "Nah Jet, you're way off. The croocks in film noir represent the trees and the vines in a jungle."
But I mostly see people disagreeing, and askink me why they disagree with me. Very odd.

[Snarky]

I did not say that. You need to read more closely.
When critics and academics talk about film noir (without explicitly qualifying or extending the term), they mean a set of movies made between the late thirties and the late fifties or early sixties. This is the classic film noir. Everything made in a similar vein since then is neo-noir or post-noir. The difference is that film noir had become a recognized genre with its own name and easy-to-spot style. The later movies were therefore often consciously mimicking the classic films noir.
Blade Runner isn't even a mainstream neo-noir film. It is also a science fiction movie. That makes it tech-noir, or future noir. Tech-noir films have several distinct characteristics that separate them from other noir.
Therefore, Blade Runner is not a good example. It doesn't fall under the strict definition of "film noir," and the type of film it is differs in important respects from what's normally understood by film noir.

It doesn't fall under film noir, yet it is film noir. A contradiction.

I gave a pretty good description of how this "contradiction" works. If you were to claim that the UK lies somewhere in South America, and using the Falkland Islands as evidence, you would get a similar answer.

This example is only evidence if you accept that The X-Files is noir. Since in a later post you argue that The X-Files is a noir show because of its xenophobia, this is a circular argument.

Your culture is part of your identity. Loss of ones culture is loss of identity.

Did you not understand what I wrote?

Did you understand what I wrote, because what film noir tries to prove is that ethnic minorities are a threat, not people.

Sez you. However, you cannot use The X-Files as evidence that film noir is xenophobic when the only reason you've given why X-Files should be considered noir is that both are xenophobic.

Since you don't seem to have heard of the fallacy known as circular reasoning, let me demonstrate:

- I think parrots are a type of dog, since they can both fly.
- Dogs can't fly.
- Yes they can.
- Prove it. List some dogs that can fly.
- Parrots.

In American hard-boiled detective fiction, hoodlums are repeately cast as foreigners and marginals, those who must be beaten back because they pose a threat to the white, heterosexual, middle-class values.

It'd be nice if you indicated when you were quoting someone else. See how we're now suddenly talking about "American hard-boiled detective fiction," not film noir? Burns, for all the problems with her argument, is a lot more careful about terminology than you are.

Prejudice and xenophobia is/was widespread (though not universal) in pulp fiction in general, not just in America, and not just in the hard-boiled detective genre. Fu Manchu, Tarzan, Ã, Mike Hammer, ... The list could be made very nearly endless. The question is whether film noir, which aspired to be something much more than genre potboilers, inherited this distrust of minorities.

A good example is Kiss Me Deadly, an adaptation of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer story. The film takes a critical view of Hammer, showing him as the sadistic, borderline psychopathic brute most pulp heroes in fact are. In this way, it subverts Spillane's prejudices.

I guess we finally have your argument stated in proposition form: According to film noir, the evil in the world is ethnic minorities.
That's a pretty strong statement, and one I haven't seen you produce one shred of real evidence for.

This isn't new. I'm not the first one to claim this, sadly. Whitey left the city, leaving behind the scum. In Bladerunner, the upper and middle class left the planet.

Your claim goes well beyond what Burns or Murphet argue. Murphet, in true postmodernist theory fashion, is making all sorts of claims about buried meaning and metaphor, on the somewhat slim basis that noir is French for "black." (No matter that the term only became widespread in the US in the 1970s.) According to what you have said, this prejudice is all explicit in the texts.

Others have already commented on how absurd your claim is. I think Touch of Evil, with its Mexican hero, should be enough to disprove your argument.

Simply put. Everything in film noir that isn't white, middle class, hetrosexual, male is bad.

In film noir, most of the villains are not minorities, and when minorities do appear, they're sometimes good and sometimes bad. Hence, your claim is thoroughly debunked.

Don't forget that my teachers and the 80 students they lecture must be crazy too. No, sometimes things are just like as Christy Burns, prof. Verhoeven and I say it is.

Maybe you've partly misunderstood what you've been lectured.

And not to disparage American Studies, but it's a field that is predisposed to certain conclusions. With a clear political bias, a single-minded focus on questions about identity and repression, and methods that allow a nearly kabbalistic exegesis and deconstruction of any given text, you see what you want to see. And because of the publish-or-perish nature of academia, the field generates "X expresses the repression of minorities"-explanations regularly and indiscriminately.

This is not to say that there's no merit to some of these theories (if you had started out talking about the depiction of women in film noir, this thread wouldn't be five pages long right now), just that the mere existence of a theory isn't nearly enough to conclude its correctness.

I could say that the butler who doesn't think much of the main character in sunset boulevoir is german, therefore the bad guy. (spot the bad guy)

Erich von Stroheim, who played and essentially was the butler Max, was actually an Austrian Jew, not German. Given how closely the film tracks reality (with most actors playing a version of themselves), and the makeup of silent-era Hollywood, it seems safe to assume that the same is true of the character.

However, his german blood is unimpotant in the movie. (He's 99% American)
Yet it does explain why he acts in an "un-american" way (from powerfull director to lapdog). (Shag a german and women will rule the world, therefore destroy the family structure I.E. family values. Keep things American, die like a man, don't live like a lapdog)

Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what Billy Wilder, also an Austrian Jew, meant to express.

[MrColossal]

Where was I, ah yes, 2:45 am.

I came to the conclusion first, then I read the article.

As he already said, he believed it was an orange already.

And sometimes things are just as they appear.

Exactly! Somtimes an alien is just an alien, sometimes a movie dealing with a dark gritty storyline has nothing to do with secret feelings towards black people learning to read, therefore not all film noir can be generalized! We agree finally.

I salute thee.

*jet, gives Eric a firm handshake

Simply put. Everything in film noir that isn't white, middle class, hetrosexual, male is bad.

Everything? I thought sometimes things are just as they appear? From your response to my agreeing with you I'd say that you agreed with me, so why are you back to making generalizations?

[jetxl]

Because it's "simply put."

It doesn't fall under the strict definition of "film noir," and the type of film it is differs in important respects from what's normally understood by film noir.

Film noir is a genre a strick definition genre? More like loose theme of a dark outlived place, no hope, a crime, a villian.


I'll ignore the dog bit. If it had a point then you wouldn't srew it up with retorical questions.

In American hard-boiled detective fiction, hoodlums are repeately cast as foreigners and marginals, those who must be beaten back because they pose a threat to the white, heterosexual, middle-class values.

It'd be nice if you indicated when you were quoting someone else. See how we're now suddenly talking about "American hard-boiled detective fiction," not film noir? Burns, for all the problems with her argument, is a lot more careful about terminology than you are.

I already did. And you are way to carefull.


reading...

[MrColossal]

So then do you disagree with your initial statement then?

"I hate Noir. It shows the fear for ethnic minorities like blacks, latino's, homo's, jews and in the X-files even aliens is correct. These minorities are here to destroy the family values. To come in contact with their culture will rot your life just like that of the detective."

Since that was a generalization of all film noir.

[jetxl]

AH! That's why you disagree?

What I was thinking:
I don't like Noir. It shows the fear for ethnic minorities like blacks, latino's, homo's, jews and in the X-files even aliens is correct.
I see messages like.
"These minorities are here to destroy the family values."
"To come in contact with their culture will rot away your life just like that of the detective."
"Stay in the suburbs"

Clearly old fashioned.

More than six decades later and still no desrtuction of family values. It seems we have nothing to fear.

Sorry about the unclear message.

[Snarky]

The proof:
I googled "Film Noir" and it came up with this http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html

[Classic film noir developed during and after World War II, taking advantage of the post-war ambience of anxiety, pessimism, and suspicion.]

The argument:
So the audiance was afraid, depressed and lacked trust. The film makers don't use a suburbian family to describe that feeling, but use a dark city instead. The (anti)hero is a depressed, lower class, white male. He can't trust anybody, he has a low set of morals and is a criminal or has connections in the underworld. Not a family guy, in fact the family is not present in the noir movies. The world without family values.

HELM: Let make it very clear that I do NOT see film noir as message to spread racism. This must be the bandwagon propaganda. Racism would be if the hero shows he is superior towards the ethnic minorities. However, the hero, although white male, is fully intergrated in the dark world. And he is not happy with that.
The noir film shows minorities as weird and as people with lower morals.
Subconscious or not is irrelevant, the message stayed the same.

First of all, this doesn't come close to proof. The reference you quote (by the way, an excellent resource) does not mention ethnic or other minorities at all.

No one disputes that noir takes place in a dark, corrupt world. What's missing is the connection from this to a specific indictment of minorities. The closest I've seen is something like: "Well, it takes place in the city, which means the ghetto (though we rarely actually see any ethnic minorities), so it must be against the kind of people who live in the city. In other words minorities and gays."

That's flawed on so many counts. First of all, it's easy to overstate the urban nature of film noir. Many of them take place extensively in suburban or extra-urban settings. In The Long Goodbye, Marlowe follows the trail of evidence to parties in suburban houses, and the final standoff takes place in a house in the middle of nowhere. Touch of Evil is set mostly in the wilderness on the US-Mexico border. In Sunset Blvd., it's the mansions and boulevards on the outskirts of town that most strongly represent corruption, while the young crowd in downtown apartments and cafes stand for hope and vitality.

Secondly, to equate the city with ethnic neighborhoods and ghettos is anachronistic. The "white flight" to the suburbs had barely begun during the period of classic film noir. That was a trend that mostly belongs to the sixties and later. The white city-dwellers in film noir are not code for minorities. They're depictions of a real population that actually existed. It was only later that middle-class white people came to see downtown as an ethnic hell-hole, as depicted in movies of the late sixties, seventies and eighties (most notably Taxi Driver).

Thirdly, in order to come to this conclusion you're employing a tortured chain of reasoning, where many of the steps studiously avoid more natural explanations. For instance, in your quote from that film site, you've elided the actual explanation they give for the paranoia and anxiety of film noir, in order to substitute your own:

Fear, mistrust, bleakness and paranoia are readily evident in noir, reflecting the 'chilly' Cold War period when the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present. The criminal, violent, misogynistic, hard-boiled, or greedy perspectives of anti-heroes in film noir were a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict.

[MrColossal]

You aren't reading me right...

You say you don't like noir because it has these messages you see. Then you say sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Therefore sometimes a movie is just a movie and has no underlying message or fear of cultures in it. Sometimes a butler is just a butler.

Do some movies portray a fear of the unknown through racial themes? Sure thing! Does all Noir do this? Impossible.

[Snarky]

It doesn't fall under the strict definition of "film noir," and the type of film it is differs in important respects from what's normally understood by film noir.

Film noir is a genre a strick definition genre? More like loose theme of a dark outlived place, no hope, a crime, a villian.

At this point you must just be feigning ignorance, since you've already quoted from this site, which explains it very clearly: "It was a style of black and white American films that first evolved in the 1940s, became prominent in the post-war era, and lasted in a classic "Golden Age" period until about 1960."

I'll ignore the dog bit. If it had a point then you wouldn't srew it up with retorical questions.

Ignore it as much as you like. It does mean that your X-Files example is useless as evidence, though.

In American hard-boiled detective fiction, hoodlums are repeately cast as foreigners and marginals, those who must be beaten back because they pose a threat to the white, heterosexual, middle-class values.

It'd be nice if you indicated when you were quoting someone else. See how we're now suddenly talking about "American hard-boiled detective fiction," not film noir? Burns, for all the problems with her argument, is a lot more careful about terminology than you are.

I already did. And you are way to carefull.

You indicated it before, but not for this particular statement. Sloppy attribution and indifference towards precision; those are not qualities that will serve you well in academia. Though your loyal adherence to whatever your professors say will no doubt earn you brownie points.

[Pesty]

And no, it's not a quote from a movie. I'm just awesome.

VG cats.

Achtung Franz.

[lo_res_man]

HOLY MOTHER of BOB!:o This is the KOOKIEST, thread I have ever SEEN! I ask, politly i might add, for some links and tips on finding the steriotypical music from private eye/film noir movies. Dark movies about a dark time, full of corruption and lies. I wanted to then use that for the music about a game where after an alt-ww2 where 1] no atomic bomb was invented, everyone thought einstien was crazy.2] Babbage in vented the computer 100 YEARS ahead of its time so in ww2 an AI was created.(no more american boys going to war) 3]just after ww2, demons invade earth through a wormhole, seening we were exhauseted and not having a weapon that could defete them, an a-bomb. there is a big war, niether side wins. and so we enter a corrupt world were demons own strip clubs, wizards make deals,and so do polititions. we have robot cars, and its a world that has both magic and technoligy, in some parts more advanced then ours, but its CORRUPT. the place stinks with it. I thought film noir would be the perfect mood for such a place. If ANYONE wants to help me. making backounds. doing music,  making animations even ,pm me. or post here.

but needless i was shocked. i didn't think i would open such a can o' worms, with this thread. it took a week for it to get for posts, and i was going to leave it at that. then i come back to school. (thats my acess to internet, school.) i find this HUGE thread. "JJJ,Jeepers!", to quote on cartoon rabbit, this was almost funney reading all these posts. as soon as I was done,(and I read every one)I started on this post.

[passer-by]

But distracting you was sooo  fun!   

[lo_res_man]

But distracting you was soooÃ,  fun!Ã,  Ã, 

erm... who ar u talk to here?

[passer-by]

But distracting you was soooÃ,  fun!Ã,  Ã, 

erm... who ar you talk to here?

We took your request and changed it's course...

Maybe distracting was not the right word....